‘Un beau petit mot’ : ‘Lorenzaccio’ and The Many Guises of Seduction

Abstract

It is well known that Alfred de Musset’s Lorenzaccio (1834) – which revolves around Lorenzo de’ Medici’s assassination of his cousin, the Duke of Florence, in 1537 – owes its existence in large part to Musset’s then lover George Sand; having previously written a shorter play on the same topic, she essentially bequeathed it to him, and he was to do with its subject matter and raw material as he pleased. However, it is by no means irrelevant to point out that, «[i]n the early 1830s, Alfred de Musset was fascinated by the Don Juan legend and by the nature of the man himself», which prompted him to write, in 1832 and 1833, three poems that «refer directly either to the Don Juan legend or to Mozart’s opera». Was this influence decisive in Musset’s shaping of ‘Lorenzino’ into a silver-tonged seducer? Or does Benedetto Varchi’s account of the historical Lorenzo, his contemporary, already lend itself naturally to such a portrayal? Which aspects of seduction were emphasised in the different adaptations of this story? This paper will attempt to address this last question, the answer to which could be a first step towards a diachronic analysis of the intricate theme of seduction in the most significant efforts to render the enigmatic figure of Lorenzino de’ Medici.